


The Last Song

by soldierwitch



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Gen, Season/Series 07
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2020-05-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:01:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24305575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soldierwitch/pseuds/soldierwitch
Summary: The final melody rings out. Clear as a clarion call. These are the stories found in its rhythm. The shaking heartbreak song of one last turn before the world. We meet, and we part, and we meet again before an ocean of stars and a sea of memories.Season 7 of the 100.
Relationships: Clarke Griffin & Raven Reyes, Gaia & Clarke Griffin, mentions of Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Kudos: 8





	The Last Song

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! The 100's final season has started and of course I have feelings, so here I am with a fic series. My goal is to write a fic for each episode that airs. They may not all be codas. Some of them may be expansions of scenes we saw, rewrites. or moments I wish had happened. It really just depends on where inspiration strikes. I cannot believe we're in the home stretch for this show. This is my way of bidding it farewell. I hope you all enjoy!
> 
> This chapter focuses on Clarke right after she's made the decision to execute Russell.

Clarke stinks of smoke. She wipes at her eyes, and hates that she’s dragging the evidence of her anger through this house with her smell. This house she took, the home she’s been trying to build, it’s tainted now. The others are talking behind her but their words are barely registering. 

There’s dissent and disagreement in their tones, they’re arguing among themselves. Clarke turns before they can pull her into their discussion.

“I’m going to take a shower,” Clarke says, her voice bland even to her own ears. She doesn’t wait for them to say anything just climbs the steps, careful not to touch the railing. When she gets to the top of the steps, Gaia comes out of Madi’s room, closing the door quietly behind her.

With one look Gaia can tell something is wrong, but the only thing she says is that Madi is safe and she’s asleep. Clarke nods, grateful that she has one less person to explain herself to tonight. She suspects that the moment Gaia passes her, she’ll go straight to Indra to find out what has happened.

But before she goes, Gaia says, “The decisions you make, Clarke, they are a part of us all. You carry what you must, but we carry the rest. The mistake the fleimkepas made was to force the commanders to carry it all. Don’t make our mistake.”

 _I bear it so you don’t have to_ , Clarke thinks, but she says nothing as Gaia smiles sadly at her and whispers that there’s a plate waiting for her in the fridge if she wants to eat.

Clarke walks closer to Madi’s door as soon as she hears Gaia begin to make her way downstairs but she doesn’t touch the door or its knob. She stands before her daughter’s door and breathes, taking one breath after another. Her carefully laid plans have crumbled one after the other, and her appearance is the evidence of just how much she has failed. She doesn’t want Madi to see her like this, but she desperately wants to see her daughter.

They’d parted on fractured terms. It’d been years since she’d thought about Madi’s parents. They were in a time before her, a piece of Madi’s history that she had no way of touching. Her daughter rarely talked about them, and Clarke is ashamed to admit even to herself that they’d faded from her memory. Lost to time in a way they had clearly not been lost to Madi. 

Clarke had forgotten them. Just for a moment but it was a moment that she can’t take back. Madi had wanted to connect with her, to help, by sharing her pain over the loss of her own mother. She loves her daughter for that gesture, for the strength it took to call upon a memory she’d never shared. But Clarke does not want to connect with her in that way.

Madi’s new path forward is supposed to be painless. She is supposed to be able to be the child she never got to be, and she cannot do that if she’s worried about her. Clarke refuses to let that happen. If there’s anyone’s pain that Madi should not have to carry it is Clarke’s, and she swears she will keep as much as it from Madi as she can.

“Goodnight, Madi,” Clarke whispers. She hopes it carries through the door to her sleeping daughter’s ears, but she says it more for herself than for her child. 

Clarke’s room is as pristine as she’d left it. She winces, looking down at her boots which have Russell’s blood on them. _Welcome home_ , she thinks sardonically and takes her shoes off, placing them near the door. She’ll clean them in the morning, but right now she’ll clean herself.

The water is warm as she washes. Clarke turns the knob, heating the water until it’s near scalding. When she’s done her skin will be red and halfway to raw but she doesn’t much care. If she can’t wash away her sins then she can at least cleanse as much of her skin as she can. She doesn’t want to smell like smoke and an anger that has only quieted for the time being.

By the time that she’s done, Clarke smells like the floral liquid soap she’d found in the bathroom and her hair smells like berries. It brings a smile to her face for the first time in hours. She chooses a night dress from the drawer and dons a robe. In the morning she’ll wash her clothes but for tonight she wants to eat and rest. Her bare feet feel cool against the wooden floor of the house but she likes it.

Raven is sitting at the island when Clarke enters the kitchen. Her hair is down, cascading across her shoulders. She looks beautiful even tired. Clarke has always thought Raven is beautiful. It’s as much of a fact about her as is her intelligence and her inability to tolerate bullshit. 

Still, the familiarity of the facts that Clarke can lay out about Raven soothe her. Raven changes just like everyone, but she’s stalwart and you can see the changes in her coming like a freight train. She’s the kind of person that’s loud in her existence and doesn’t care if it bothers you.

When Raven looks up at her with kindness in her eyes and pushes a mug forward to her, Clarke feels a little bit of what she’d been carrying ease from her shoulders. It’s good to be back on good terms with Raven. She’d missed her for far longer than she thought she ever would. It was supposed to be six years that they missed, it ended up being over a century. 

Clarke sits down, but she’s not comfortably on her stool before Raven says, “So Russell burns tomorrow.”

“Yes,” Clarke says, sipping from the mug Raven gave her. It’s cider. It goes down warm. Clarke blinks at the sweet, spicy taste and takes another sip.

“You do realize you’ve complicated things.”

“Yes.”

Clarke puts her mug down and looks at Raven who is propping her head up with her hand. “I thought you’d be furious,” she says.

“I thought I would be, too,” Raven says. “But I also thought you’d snap at some point. There’s only so many times you can tell someone you’re fine before it starts sounding like a lie. Your limit, Clarke, is two. I just didn’t think you’d burn a castle down.”

It’s not funny. A man is going to be executed for his crimes tomorrow and yet Clarke finds she can’t stop the bubble of laughter that comes out of her. She tips her head forward and laughs silently into her hands.

“We’ll chalk my lack of anger up to shock,” Raven says.

Clarke laughs again but as quickly as her laughter came, it goes like a wave and crashes straight into the sadness she’d been keeping at bay since she’d floated the woman who wasn’t her mom.

A tear escapes her eye and another and another. She wipes at them quickly and tries to blink them away but they keep coming, so finally she just lets them fall.

“You’re allowed to grieve your mother, Clarke.”

Clarke shakes her head. “I can’t.”

“You can.”

“I can’t,” Clarke says, wiping away her last tear. “If I grieve, I am lost. I don’t have time to be lost there’s too much going on.”

Clarke’s eyes stray to the clock on the stove. It’s well past midnight. “Did Bellamy, Octavia, and Echo come home?”

“No.”

Before Clarke can stiffen, Raven says, “I’m sure they’re fine, Clarke.”

Clarke doesn’t say anything. She’s too busy pushing her knee-jerk fear into a box. _They’re fine_ , she tells herself until she believes it enough to acknowledge what Raven said with a nod. 

“I’m going to bed,” Clarke says. “Goodnight.”

She doesn’t wait for Raven’s reply.

In her room, Clarke tries to ignore the itch in her hands. She wants a radio. She could check in if she had one. This moon disrupts radio waves but Gabriel’s camp can pick up frequencies. She’d at least have the chance of getting in touch with Bellamy if she had a radio.

Clarke tries not to think about the six years she called to him with no answer. This could very well be the same thing, hearing nothing on the other end. But if she can’t have the familiarity of his presence then she’ll take the familiarity of calling for him and hoping he’ll answer.

Crawling into bed, Clarke pulls the covers over herself and tries to get comfortable. Darkness settles over her, covering her in a blanket she’s become used to. Loneliness has its own special kind of coolness.

“The world went to shit,” Clarke says. A few moments later, in a slightly gruffer, deeper voice, she says, “What’s new?”

It’s awhile before Clarke sleeps. She makes a mental list of what needs to get done, how it could fail, the contingencies she could implement, and the timetable for how she’s going to achieve her goals. Filing it away, she succumbs to sleep thinking about the new day, but the lid on her fear cracks open just enough for her last thought to be on Bellamy telling her they’ll talk when he gets back as his hand lets go of hers.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Feedback is appreciated.


End file.
